John Krasinski’s empty suit version of Jack Ryan is a chilling preview of the impending enshittification of James Bond under Amazon’s control
For a marquee pulp-novel character from a bestselling author who has featured in several different hit movies, Jack Ryan has a terrible retention rate for actors. Alec Baldwin, who first played the Tom Clancy-created CIA analyst in the 1990 hit The Hunt for Red October, declined to reprise the role for a sequel, so 1992’s Patriot Games swapped in Harrison Ford, shifting Ryan’s tone and that of the movie around him, though it was technically in continuity with the previous entry. Ford stuck around for 1994’s Clear and Present Danger, which did even better than Patriot Games and seemed to establish Ford’s 1990s equivalent of his 1980s hero Indiana Jones. But development on further Ryan adaptations stalled, and Ford dropped out of The Sum of All Fears before it was rejiggered as a reboot with Ben Affleck as a younger Ryan, earlier in his career. Despite the film’s success, career woes appeared to shortsightedly sweep Affleck out of the role, which was rebooted yet again with Chris Pine in Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit. (This time, no Clancy book was adapted; just the idea of Ryan.) It flopped, and Ryan eventually found his way to TV with a self-titled series.
This is how it happened that actually, despite a three-decade start at the movies, the actor who has logged the most man-hours as Jack Ryan is Jim from The Office. Or, if you will, the writer-director of A Quiet Place. That’s right, we’re talking the beloved Esurance spokesman John Krasinski. Now he’s even made a jump to a feature sorta-film, with Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan: Ghost War debuting on Prime Video this week. The show is over, but Ghost War has an ending that clearly leaves the door open for more films, which means that Krasinski is within spitting distance of being the Ryan with the most movies, too. Maybe they can adapt an unused Tom Clancy book as The Content and the Kremlin.
It’s easy to make fun of Krasinski, in general because he’s both handsome and a little smug, and more specifically because Ghost War, which he co-wrote, is notably bad. With its clunky dialogue, predictable plotting, insultingly simplified geopolitics, and flat performance from the current Ryan administration, it’s hard to imagine it passing muster on the big screen. The Hunt for Red October is a John McTiernan banger. Ford’s Clear and Present Danger is kind of boring in spots, but in that assured ’90s way where there’s still a classic action sequence in the middle of it, and also Willem Dafoe. Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit actually scales the character down quite effectively! It’s underrated, check it out!
As a Jack Ryan Guy, Krasinski should be able to drop into this lineage pretty easily. Clancy’s Ryan is a somewhat nerdy analyst who gradually finds himself in the midst of action, and – in the initial book series – eventually works his way into the Oval Office! Sometimes earlier Ryan movies felt a little guilty of casting toward the presidential role; specifically, Ford felt like he was heading in that direction pretty quickly. In fact, Ford playing the ass-kicking president in Air Force One (released around the time a third Ford Ryan movie should have been emerging) likely contributed to his decision to formally drop out of the role a couple of years later. Since then, the role has been cast younger, and Krasinski has the right balance of physical confidence and unassuming countenance to play a guy who’s good at his job but doesn’t have his eyes on the presidency.
At least in theory. In Ghost War, even more than the series it spins off from, his Ryan feels like an empty suit doing a couple of weak Jim Quips here and there. He’s certainly believable, in the sense that his Ryan opens the film having quit the CIA in order to work for a hedge fund, and Krasinski is the most naturally hedge-fund-y Ryan actor this side of Ben Affleck. (Despite Krasinski’s Office experience as a cubicle drone, Affleck honestly feels more like he could play a character who would work at a hedge fund but at least hate himself or make fun of it.) But he lacks Ford’s ability to make self-righteous finger-pointing about the moral transgressions of his superiors (at the CIA! The CIA, Jack!) oddly charming in its stodginess. Krasinski just comes across as superior.
Or maybe it’s the contemporary Jack Ryan Content that’s to blame there. Obviously no version of this character is going to live in a world with our actual presidents, given that Ryan himself might wind up there someday (he’s running!). Yet there was a sense of closer real-world parallel in those first few Ryan adventures, despite the fact that they were obviously made up. Ghost War especially feels like it’s taking place in some weird post-9/11 reverie, where jingoism is tolerated as long as it’s above-board, and the CIA generally has our best interests at heart. Broadly speaking, it could be considered propaganda, but it’s almost too weightless of a timekiller to even count as that. It’s very streaming-era: It’s more Jack Ryan by volume (hence Krasinski playing him more than anyone else!), but not necessarily by weight. It’s not closely based on the Clancy novels, but it seems like a bunch of them strung together. It’s Jack Ryan-ish, only they have the rights to drop the “ish”!
“Jack Ryan doesn’t need to become an American version of the spiritually immortal James Bond. But he does offer a chilling look at what could happen to Bond now that the character is owned by Amazon.”
In the scheme of things, this isn’t a big deal. There were already five Jack Ryan movies, all falling in the OK-to-good range, and Tom Clancy is dead. Jack Ryan doesn’t need to become an American version of the spiritually immortal James Bond. But he does offer a chilling look at what could happen to Bond now that the character is owned by Amazon. Sure, they’ll prioritize a feature film, but a decade or two down the line, we could be entering Bond’s content-simulation years: a spy who came in from the cold and was never allowed to leave the couch.
Jesse Hassenger (@rockmarooned) is a writer living in Brooklyn. He’s a regular contributor to The A.V. Club, Polygon, and The Week, among others. He podcasts at www.sportsalcohol.com, too.
